CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Americans' love affair with credit and debit cards may be coming to an end, which means cash could soon be king again.

It's been a decade since fast-food restaurants started accepting credit and debit cards, and consumers started swiping plastic more often than they were writing checks.

It had gotten to the point where many of us marveled at how little cash we carried.

Life has changed -- dramatically. Consider:

• Consumers now are more averse to debt, and credit cards and big credit limits are harder to come by.

• Some banks are starting to charge fees for debit cards - a move that is causing huge consumer outrage.

• Merchants as of this month can begin offering discounts to consumers who are paying by cash, check or debit card - rather than with a credit card.

• Also this month, stores can begin requiring $10 minimum on credit card transactions. In the past, this was done by some small stores in violation of Visa and MasterCard agreements that ban minimum transactions. Now everyone from Giant Eagle to Walmart could require the $10 minimum purchase.

"The consumer wants to be back in control of their money," said Kevin Foster, a methodologist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. "Cash is just much easier to control."

The Boston Federal Reserve started noticing a shift to cash a couple of years ago. The bank's Consumer Payment Choice survey in 2008 found that people paid with cash 15 times in a month, used a debit card 21 times and a credit card 15 times.

A year later, the use of cash jumped by 27 percent, while debit card use fell by 10 percent and credit card use dropped by 22 percent. The Fed's 2010 data, due out later this year, is expected to show that trend continuing, Foster said.

The findings are consistent with those by Javelin Strategy & Research of California, one of the best-known banking and finance research firms. A recent Javelin study found that credit card use dropped by 26 percent in just one year as the economy tanked.

Credit cards took off about 20 years ago as wider use of credit scores allowed out-of-state banks to approve accounts without exhaustive applications. Consumer demand led merchants like grocery stores to start accepting credit cards in the early 1990s.

And then Visa launched its signature debit card in 1995, with help from such celebrity endorsers as Bob Dole, Deion Sanders and Pierce Brosnan's James Bond.

Jean Ann Fox, director of financial services for the Consumer Federation of America in Washington, D.C., said banks did a good job of motivating consumers to use credit and debit cards. They dangled rewards like airline miles and cash back, and mixed in massive advertising campaigns such as "For everything else there's MasterCard."

No surprise, then, that the U.S. personal savings rate was negative in 2005 and 2006, at minus 1 percent, meaning that people spent all of the money they earned, and then some. The negative numbers were the first since the Great Depression.

The movement toward plastic and electronic payments and away from old-fashioned paper -- meaning checks and cash - was going along smoothly until the economy collapsed in 2008.

As did the rock star popularity of credit cards, said Ben Woolsey, director of marketing and consumer research for creditcards.com, a Texas company that helps people find new credit cards.

First, banks were scorned for taking government bailouts, Woolsey said. Then banks started whacking credit limits and making it more difficult for people to get a new credit card.

For a couple of years, people gravitated instead toward debit cards, the Fed said.

Now, consumers are queasy about overdraft fees involving debit cards - a practice made more difficult by new law in August 2010.

The nail in the coffin is the new practice at some major banks to charge consumers a monthly fee for using a debit card - a card they used to pay consumers rewards to use.

Major banks, including Chase, Wells Fargo and SunTrust, this summer either adopted or started testing monthly fees. The issue blew up last month when Bank of America, the nation's largest bank, announced a new $5 monthly debit card fee.

"There is a percentage of people who will stop using their debit cards now," saidBill Hardekopf, CEO of LowCards.com, an Alabama-based consumer information site.

If more banks adopt debit card fees, he believes many people will either go back to paying with cash or use a credit card -- if they have available credit and aren't worried about running up debt.

A Federal Reserve report last week said revolving debt has dropped 18 percent since 2008 and is at the lowest level since 2004.

Hardekopf doubts many will pay a monthly debit card fee willingly; some might go after fee-free debit cards at smaller community banks and credit unions. "To me paying $60 a year to use your checking account is ridiculous," Hardekopf said.

A return to cash is the logical choice, said Ken Robinson, a Cleveland certified financial planner and author of the book, "Don't Make a Budget: Why it's So Hard to Save Money and What to Do About It."

That's particularly true now that merchants, as of Oct. 1,can start offering discounts for cash payments and can set $10 minimum purchases for credit cards, he said. The changes are part of the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Act, related to debit fees paid by merchants to banks.

"We live in a society where people will drive two blocks to save a penny on a gallon of gas," Robinson said. "If people have incentives to pay with money they actually have in their pocket, then I think many will start using cash more often."

Part of the trick will be people getting in the habit of carrying more cash - something they're starting to do.

In 2008, people carried an average of $79 in their wallet or pocket, according to the Boston Fed. That jumped 13 percent to $89 in 2009. The amount of cash people have on average in their home jumped from $157 to $229. Those numbers are expected to rise again in 2010.

Westlake resident Joseph Gardewin says he will start paying with cash more often if stores start offering discounts. He pays in cash at his local pet store because of the discount.

But he uses his credit card at gas stations and stores like Costco because he's not sure in advance how much he's going to spend.

Gardewin, 65, said he's partial to cash because of his upbringing by Depression-era parents and training by his wife, who is deceased, to watch what he spends. "I hope more stores start offering discounts for cash," he said.

Besides the shift back to cash, the Fed is also watching new payment options, Foster said, like the potential to pay at the store or doctor's office from some kind of account by waving your cell phone past a sensor. It's called "near-field communication," and will be included on future surveys.

Robinson said consumers will be better off turning away from plastic. People will spend within their means, and that ultimately will be better for the economy, he said.

"It will absolutely a good thing," he said, "if we move back to cash."

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